I M M O B I L I S M | a labor of love lost and found (2010-2020)

I wrote these words a long time ago.

Though drivers and passengers will argue over time and speed (as we will see in the next section), in my experience, this did not tend to occur over seating arrangements, as though there was a general ethic of cooperation among drivers and passengers when it comes to the distribution of bodies within the vehicle. Negotiations over where and how to sit almost always occurred seamlessly, and without conflict or verbal negotiation, though drivers would sometimes scan the street ahead and anticipate the arrival of women aboard. In these cases, drivers will directly ask male passengers to cluster together, so that the women would be more likely to feel comfortable and board the bus. I did not see a single incident in which such requests were challenged. Moreover, the great majority of these interactions were not orchestrated by the driver, and occurred spontaneously as passengers balanced calculations of common courtesy, cultural expectation, and distance from their destination.

While this system led to rampant “apportionment” (Adwan, 2004: 63) of state institutions across a wide range of political actors and territories, I will only focus on the networks and policies that rebuilt the center of Beirut. This focus on the city center does two things: first, it provides a means for seeing historical continuities between colonial and post-war urban policies and practices; second, it represents the congealing of a network of interests that continues to set urban and transport policy in Beirut to this day.

Some routes feature bus managers (referred to as the mas’oul, or ‘responsible one’) stationed at strategic locations along the route. The mas’oul’s job is to help communicate and coordinate information about the daily schedule, and thus, work to regulate the pace of bus line. For example, Bus Number 5 (Hamra to Ain Saadeh) has a permanent 'pit stop' roughly halfway along its route, under Yerevan Bridge in Bourj Hammoud. At this point, each driver is required to pause and speak with a mas'oul who checks on the bus schedule, often inquiring about the name of the driver behind the one just arrived. When a problem is detected, such as when a bus arrives at this point too early, or when a bus ahead is stuck in traffic, the mas’oul may ask drivers to park for a few minutes, or loop around the bridge, or even skip a whole leg of the route to overtake the bus ahead of him. These decisions are made on the fly, and the driver is often forced to explain the reasoning for his idling or rerouting to his passengers. Such encounters can often lead to brief arguments, as passengers complain about the delay (more on this in Section 3).

I wrote these words in secret, after dark, a long time ago. I hesitated when writing these words.